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Dan Henning: Miami Dolphins ‘have to be frugal’ with Wildcat

Last Sunday’s 22-21 win over New England marked the first time since it was introduced that the Dolphins didn’t run a single play out of the Wildcat formation. Offensive coordinator Dan Henning addressed that aspect of the game plan in his weekly chat with the media Wednesday.

Henning started by admitting that the Wildcat hasn’t been the same since Ronnie Brown was injured four weeks ago in the Tampa Bay game.

“We miss Ronnie because Ronnie was the guy we put all the time and effort in, and there were no balls on the ground for the two years he was running it,” he said.

“There’s something to that. We have to be frugal with it. If you go way back to when we first started it, the man from New Haven (coach Tony Sparano) told you if the ball was on the ground there wasn’t going to be much of it anyhow. So when the ball’s on the ground and you lose 15 yards you get some ‘word to the wise’ and it might not even be a statement, it might a ‘Harrumph!'”

“So you have to take all that into consideration, and we have certain parts of the field we like to do it. And even though we haven’t had a lot of yards with it over the last six or seven weeks, we have had touchdowns, and we take advantage to where we think we can take advantage. So we certainly have not abandoned it.

“When you get behind that’s not the way to go; you need to get back in the game. Last year in the second game against New England people said the Patriots figured it out and shut it down. Well, they didn’t shut it down, we did. Every time we got the ball we were behind in the game down here last year. They came back three of those times but in the end they prevailed.

“There’s a lot of factors involved: How we do it, who we do it with, and why. Obviously it’s shorthanded with Ronnie. One of the reasons we used it in the first place (was) to get Ricky (Williams) and Ronnie in the game at the same time. Two guys who can run outside and inside. That was a feature for it, and was very successful.”